Iron In My Spine
by snarryvader81
Summary: Will is forced to marry Hannibal, Khal of a cannibalistic tribe, to raise an army and take back her family's Iron Throne, while facing betrayal from those closest to her and opposition from a queen desperate to hold onto her power. GoT/ASoIaF fusion, fem!Will, hannigram
1. i sweat my rust

Recently she's taken to standing on the balcony and looking out across the water, endless waves of pure, smooth blue that go on for as far as her eyes can see. Somewhere, miles and miles away, it laps up on the shores of a land she's never set foot on, and here, it dampens the air, castoff spray joining with the sweat on her brow and running in rivulets down the sides of her face.

She's cold, frozen to the bone, and she can almost imagine the perspiration turning to ice on her skin, searing the sheer fabric of her dress to her flesh. Then it would only come off with skin, royal blood gushing out of her veins, and what would come of any of this then?

Of course, given what little she's heard, her _husband_ might not even mind.

"Ah, there she is, the bride-to-be!"

Will doesn't turn around at the voice or the approaching footsteps, though she lets herself be led when hands find her arm. In off the balcony, away from the drops of water that might of once been closer to her homeland than she ever has, and then she's being stared at critically by a pair of narrow brown eyes.

"You're a mess," says Frederick, lips pulling back minutely. "Being soaked with sweat will not make an attractive first impression."

She isn't _attractive_ under any circumstances. Her House was known for beauty but that hadn't extended to her—mousey and awkward, bordering on scrawny, with hair that grew in every wrong direction. No refined features on her face, no queenly bearing—she's sure that if it wasn't for the madness, everyone would wonder if she wasn't some misbegotten bastard passed off as a Graham. (Sometimes, she wishes they would think that anyway.)

She voices her thoughts: "I'm not pretty. Maybe . . . he won't be interested?" She hates the note of hope she hears creep into her voice. Frederick hears it, too, and his eyes flash, but he twists his lips into what he must think is a reassuring smile.

"You've a woman's body, Will," he says and his hand creeps up, up, up, hovering over her breast. She can feel the heat off his palm but he doesn't touch, not quite, and eventually he moves on to her cheek. His fingers do brush her there. "I don't think your face will matter much to the savage, do you?"

She tries not to flinch at the slight scrape of his fingernails, at the sheer proximity that hits her skin like a burn. This man has raised her from birth, but she hates being touched by him just as much as anyone else, has hated it more and more the older she's gotten.

He chuckles at her, light and dismissive, and finally lets his hand fall away completely. "Grahams," he says, shaking his head. "So many peculiarities. It's fascinating. But even if your father was still on the throne instead of that fat usurper, you'd still have to be getting over this . . . _aversion_ to touch. You've had your first bleed, Will—right now your mother would've been giving you the same speech her mother gave her, about how you have to marry to ensure the welfare of your House. But this is even more than that—it's to ensure your _throne_. Do you want to live in exile for the rest of your life, hunted like a dog? A _beggar queen_, in rags, dependent on the _charity_ of those who should be below you?"

Will doesn't know what she wants, not really. Frederick filled her childhood with stories of that faraway land across the sea that she's never seen, about a throne of swords and the glory of her House, ground into ruin by a rebellion that should've been crushed in its infancy. He's put visions in her mind's eye of power, her mad father's crown ripped from the usurper's severed head to be placed on hers.

And in a way, Will does want that. She's never known anything except what she has right now, but the way she thinks, the way she feels, she can almost _know_ what she could have, experience it vicariously through imagination.

But Frederick isn't half as smart as he believes himself to be. Will is mad, like all Grahams invariably are, but while he thinks that makes her stupid, what it really does is let her see into him, if not through him.

He talks about _her throne_, but she can help but think that what he means is _his_. Every time she looks into his eyes, which isn't often, she sees the glint of greed, that same burn for power that he's forced alight somewhere deep in herself.

A part of her doesn't want to believe it. That the only unchanging thing she's ever known—the Maester who delivered her, who raised her almost as his own after her mother succumbed to childbed fever—could be so cruel. Could _sell her_ and pass it off with pretty lies about how it's for her own good.

Maybe that's why she hasn't out and out said she won't do it.

Maybe she knows it'll make no difference anyway and right now, she'd like to hold on to the last thing she has left, as tenuous as it is.

"Start getting yourself ready," he says, with a nod at the sunken bath in the middle of the rooms. "Let the servants help you, if just today. They're all very clean, aren't they?" The last is directed at the other women in the room, who all nod hastily.

She almost laughs, or cries. He never has understood why she hates being touched, that it has nothing to do with cleanliness. It's the same with her refusal to make eye contact.

For all that he goes on about how interesting her mind is, most of his ideas about it are wrong.

"They'll be here soon," he continues, "and I expect you to be completely ready when I call for you." With one last look, he turns on his heel and starts towards the doorway. She stares at the back of his head for a long moment, and calls out before she can stop herself.

"Are they really cannibals?" She doesn't know why she asks, why she wants confirmation of something she hopes is just a rumor. It'll just upset her more, but on the other hand, the more she knows, the better off she may be. Knowledge is the only power Will has ever had.

Frederick turns slowly. He looks like he's debating what he's going to say, and that's answer enough.

"Lord Crawford tells me they are," he finally admits. "It's a part of their . . ." He sneers. ". . . culture. Ritualistically devouring their enemies and the like. They're a brutal people, but then again, that's why we want them."

Her knuckles have gone white around the fabric of her dress. She can hear it begin to tear, as if the sound was coming from somewhere far away.

"I wouldn't worry," he says, and there's that smile again, the complete opposite of reassuring. "You're a _Graham_. They may all be mad, but . . . so are you."

She watches him go like her vision's become a tunnel. Behind her, servants are talking to her or each other, voices a high, annoying buzz in the back of her skull. Her mind is splashing up over itself and all she can feel is the cold, on her skin and around her bones and in her veins.

She turns and steps, staggers, until she registers steam around her head and resistance against her legs, soaked material clinging again to her skin. She stares at the water lapping the edge of the marble and thinks once more of the sea, of a distant shore that blood dictates belongs to her.

"—too hot, milady!" a voice finally breaks through, anxious and concerned.

Is it?

Yet she is still cold.

.

At some point, though she can't remember when, the servants got the dress off of her. After that, there are flashes, small intervals when something in her recedes and her senses come back for an instant. There's soap on her skin and suds in her hair and fingers, _hands_, everywhere on her, and then she's out of the tub and her skin is red from heat at one moment and suddenly back to it's usual sickly pale the next. She feels a brush catching on tangles and powder on her body, all over, because sweat isn't attractive, is it?

Perfume behind her ears and files grating against her nails and lotion and makeup and finally another dress pulled over her head and adjusted against her body, just in time for the knock at the door.

She expects another servant, or possibly Frederick, but instead Lady Crawford steps into the room. She's the last person Will would've expected but at the same time, she's not surprised.

Lady Crawford is sick—actually _dying_, Frederick had whispered to her once, eager to gossip behind their hosts' backs. It's some ailment of the lungs, and yet Will has never heard her cough. If not for the devastation plain in every line of Lord Crawford's body, she might not have even believed it was true.

Lady Crawford is still as proud and beautiful today as she was when they first arrived a year ago. She seems unbreakable, and yet Will can imagine what's coming as clearly as if it were happening to her, tissue and fat wasting from the bone and eyes sinking into the skull and lungs agonizing to draw in what little air they can past bloodless lips.

And no amount of pride will stop it from happening, one day.

Lady Crawford looks at her, eyes just as critical as Frederick's, and nods curtly. Her lips move, though Will can't hear a word she says, and she then turns back the way she came. She understands that she should follow her, reluctantly moving to trail a few paces behind.

She leads her through the winding, grandiose hallways of the building, past lavishly decorated rooms that Frederick had privately scoffed at, deemed lacking.

Will's senses begin to come back slowly, one at a time. First she realizes she smells overpoweringly of fruit and flowers, sickly sweet and nauseating. Then it gets worse when she notices the way it seems to cling to the stickiness of her skin, the powder and lotion and makeup feeling like a thick layer of grime sitting heavy on top of her. She felt cleaner before the bath.

Finally, Lady Crawford's words begin to penetrate and register.

"—isn't as uncivilized as you would assume. He was rather eloquent, in fact."

She almost laughs at that, loud and hysterical. The vegetarian noblewoman calling the cannibal warlord _eloquent_.

"When did you meet him?" she asks instead, the words hoarse, drawn out with effort from between lips that barely move.

She hesitates. "Among his people, he is . . . a healer, of some renown. It's not _our_ medicine, but it's supposedly effective."

"And did he help you?"

"No," she says briskly. "Nothing can help me. But I can help you. Take this advice to heart: do not offend him. He doesn't take insult lightly. Be _polite_."

That does, finally, startle a laugh out of her. The sound is just as ugly as she'd feared.

"A _cannibal _who values _politeness_?"

Lady Crawford stops by a set of double doors and shoots her a glance over her shoulder. "Maester Chilton oversimplifies things. Savage doesn't mean uncomplicated."

The doors open out onto the front of the house. Frederick and Lord Crawford are already there, the former shifting anxiously as they look out over the path that winds its way through the property's acreage.

Frederick spares her a glance but doesn't comment—evidently, he finds what the servants did satisfactory.

They descend into an awkward, drawn out silence. It only breaks when he all but hisses at Crawford: "It's getting close. There's no sign of them."

"They'll be here," says Crawford, self-assured as usual. "I've never known them to be late."

Frederick sniffs. Will fidgets.

And then comes the sound, muffled by distance: horse hooves beating against the ground.

As they get louder, Will thinks they sound like the executioner's ax meeting the flesh and bone of the neck, over and over and over. Or maybe, maybe they're more like _war drums_—a rhythm to break the peace, a rhythm to spill blood on foreign land.

They finally appear in a cloud of gray-brown dust, three of them emerging from the copse of trees at the far end of the path. They seem so far away and yet they're through the gates almost before she can blink or breathe, pulling their horses to a stop. The animals shift their feet and flick their tails, huge black eyes unblinking between the straps of their bridles.

Crawford rushes forward to say something, voice booming across the yard, and Frederick takes the opportunity to grab her wrist and pull her to his side.

"He doesn't speak the Common Tongue," he whispers, eyes fixated on the man in the middle of the group, on the black horse. Will's eyes pass over all of them, but she doesn't really see, doesn't really _look_. "So don't waste your breath. But _smile_."

"What?"

"Smile at him and _meet his eyes_."

His grip tightens to bruising before he lets go. Then he steps back and she's left frozen and exposed, like a deer in the sights of a crossbow.

Crawford is talking to everyone now, she thinks, given the movement of his eyes and his body language, but she's only catching bits and pieces.

"—this is Willow of the House of Graham, the first of her name and the rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdoms across the Sea—"

Finally, she takes a step, then another. Again and again until she's standing close enough for the black horse to lean down and put its nose on the top of her head.

"—Hannibal," says Jack with finality.

_Hannibal_, thinks Will.

Her gaze travels up, up, over boots and legs and clothing that's finer than she would of expected. When she reaches the shoulders she pulls her lips back into what she hopes is a passable smile and then, finally, she's looking at a face.

Under different circumstances, she might've called it handsome. It certainly doesn't look like a savage's, or a cannibal's. Her gaze flits around, taking in each individual feature without ever quite meeting the eyes.

She can almost hear Frederick's teeth grinding in the background but what he still doesn't understand after all this time is that it's nothing about shyness or even madness—it's about looking and seeing too much, or sometimes, more frighteningly, _not enough_.

She wonders, in the instant before she shifts her eyes down from his forehead, which she'll find in Hannibal's.

His eyes are brown, but an odd shade, running almost . . . reddish at certain points. There are no veins visible in the whites and the pupils are narrow in the sunlight. They're focused singularly and intensely on her and she . . . can't direct any of that scrutiny back at him. It's like he's in a blind spot—she can't see him or feel him, _become _him just by looking and imagining. As he is right now, she can't tell a thing about him.

This has never happened before. Maybe she should be happy about it, but instead she feels almost . . . challenged. She _should_ be able to read this man, and yet there he sits right in front of her, inscrutable and blank, slipping easily through her fingers.

So she grasps at him in a new way. There is one thing she already knows about him, so she takes the word _cannibal _and runs it over and over through her mind, distilling it into something real and applying it to him. She thinks about him killing, about human blood running over his hands and _down his chin_, about his teeth tearing into human flesh, grinding it into bits his throat works to swallow. She can't know what it tastes like so she thinks of the blood itself, hot and thick and tangy with iron, sliding down her throat and warming her belly.

And finally, _finally_, the feelings begin to come, vague and misshapen. She gets the impression of being malformed, ingrown, shrieking and base and twisted, an abomination that someone should've left to die. But it doesn't die. Instead, it festers.

She's not smiling anymore. Her throat's gone dry and tight, trapping the bile inching its way up from her stomach. She's locked in place, pinned by her own perception. She feels the insanity like a wave, rushing over and dragging her under.

Hannibal tilts his head, slowly, thoughtfully. Then his lips twitch and he's kicking the black horse in the sides, pulling the reins and leading his companions off the way they came.

"What was _that_?" Frederick's voice rings out, nearly shrill. "He didn't—did he _like_ her?"

Crawford laughs heartily. "Oh, if he didn't like her, I think we'd know."

Her stomach clenches, churns. She's sweating again, past all the powder and perfume, and her limbs feel weak beneath her prickling skin. It's like she has a fever, her delirium rattling with the hollow cries of that _thing_ that's taken up residence deep in her psyche.

She doesn't know how long she stands there. At some point Lady Crawford's presence begins to slowly filter in, hovering behind her but not touching, not crowding. Further behind, Frederick and Crawford are talking, eagerly discussing the future, plans for conquest with _her new army_, the savages she's about to marry herself to.

And she can't take it.

"I don't like him," she hisses, low but still loud enough to be heard.

The conversation stops immediately and the silence is icy; she can feel Frederick's eyes on her back.

"What?" he demands.

"He might like me," she bites out, swinging around, "but _I_ don't like _him_. I don't want to marry him."

"'You don't want . . .'" he echoes, stalking forward. "'You don't _want_'? This isn't about what you _want_. This is about _more_ than you. This is about your family, your House, its honor, its _throne_!"

"And I can bring _so much_ honor to my House by becoming some, some cannibal's whore?"

"The road to any throne is long, and dangerous, and brimming with little _indignities_ to be suffered." He's up on her now, breath just reaching her face. "And if you were _any_ kind of Queen, you would suffer them, and suffer them _gladly_. If that savage demanded that you let all of his men, all forty thousand, and their women, and their horses, and their dogs, fuck you, you should not only agree but _smile_ as you do so."

She flinches away as he reaches up, his fingers brushing the hair out of her eyes. "But you have a lesser indignity to suffer, Will. After all, you were born to be a queen. And so you shall be."

He leans in, presses a feather light kiss to her brow.

"Queen of the savages."

.

That night, Will stands on her balcony, stares at the black rolling water of the sea.

Thinks about jumping into it.

Thoughts of a throne of iron swords keep her feet planted on the floor, her hands clenched around the balustrade. The season's first snow appears in flurries, invisible in the dark until they come to cling on her hair and skin.

She doesn't notice.

She doesn't know what time it is when she finally turns and goes to her bed, or even what makes her do so. She slides under a blanket stiffened by the cold and stares at the ceiling as warmth slowly accumulates around her.

She doesn't expect to sleep that night, but the air is so _frigid_ it magnifies the effect of the warmth, lulling her off and off until the dark of the room turns into the dark of her mind. It's something much blacker, much deeper.

She dreams of a stag, huge and horrible and covered in a raven's feathers.

.

.

Author's Note: So I first posted this on archiveofourown back at the beginning of the year and I've been wanting to put it up here too but I'm a lazy bitch.

I now have a much better grasp on the Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones universe than I did when I wrote this, so some of the finer details are a bit skewed. Beyond that, however, it's become a pretty much straight fusion of Hannibal characters in the GoT setting.

I genderbent Will because while I could've made this A/B/O Verse (and I _do _love abo verse), I was already overwhelmed with my GoT ignorance and I really wasn't confident enough to add that to it, too.

This was a fill for my own prompt on the Hannibal kink meme, which went:

"I really hope this hasn't been requested yet-I did see one GOT AU but not this particular prompt.

So, I want the Dany/Drogo scenario: Young, introverted, virgin Will's jerkass relative/guardian (Jack? Chilton? idk) marries him off to Hannibal, the leader of a tribe of seriously hardcore cannibals as part of a political alliance.

+128947083745 if Will gets pregnant (it can be A/B/O verse or even fem!Will) and has to eat a human heart raw to make the baby strong/prove his worth to the tribe

+my various fresh organs if Hannibal starts manipulating Will out of his shell and together they deliver a painful end to the asshole relative

And if you could throw in a happy ending, I'd love you forever, as I'm a sucker for them."

-Anna


	2. i'm in love with being queen

She wakes from a slap across her face.

For a moment her head stays as it is, parallel to her shoulder, and she blinks slowly, deliberately, as she tries to orient herself, answer _who-where-what-why_.

She's staring at stones set into the ground, gray granite covered in a weak dusting of snow. Her feet are wet and colder than the rest of her, even her face as the wind beats against it in harsh gusts. She tastes blood in her mouth, gushing down over the molar that made the knick.

Her cheek on that side stings, but realer than that is where her skin _prickles_, hairs raised from hot exhalations of breath and a soft velvet nose dragging against her neck and over her shoulder. The presence is gone now, though—no heat behind her, no clop of hooves, no flashes of twisting shadows in the shape of antlers.

Now there's just what's in front of her.

"Going somewhere?" asks Frederick, voice tight with anger.

Finally her head turns back. Her eyes skim over him, standing there in his nightclothes with his lips pursed into a thin line and his nose flaring, and move past his head to take in the surroundings. It looks like they're in some back courtyard of the estate she doesn't recognize, a few servants peering down curiously out of the surrounding windows.

She's not surprised. Whenever this has happened before, she's never woken up anywhere she's familiar with.

"I was dreaming," she mutters, reluctantly dragging her gaze back to him.

He narrows his eyes. She knows what he must be doing—recalling all the other times and comparing them to this to determine if it's a genuine episode or an escape attempt made to look like one.

The sleepwalking first started when she was eight years old, a few sporadic incidents that stopped entirely for years, only to return more frequently than ever in the year preceding menarche.

At the height of it, she'd traveled _miles_, her feet bleeding and nearly frozen before she ever woke up. Locking her in her room doesn't help—even barricading only slows her down.

Frederick told her that at the madhouse he ran in her homeland, they'd had special jackets with straps that pinned the arms to the chest and made doing nearly anything impossible for the _difficult_ patients that wore them. But he doesn't have one of those now, so she gets bound in layers of blankets or, in the worst parts of it, tied to the bed frame.

Frederick looks ready to do that again, though at least as he takes in her lack of shoes and appropriate clothing, his anger seems to fade with his suspicions.

"It's an ungodly hour," he finally says, glancing around and squinting in the gray predawn light. "Only servants should be up so early. Certainly not you. We should get you back to your bed before you catch pneumonia and you should try to get a few more hours of sleep. I don't need to tell you that today you should be looking your . . . freshest."

He brushes past her and starts off across the courtyard, his pace brisk, almost eager.

She inhales slowly, deeply. The cold air bites her lungs and brings a little clarity to her head, pushing her further into wakefulness. She feels the first stirrings of adrenaline as she's seized with the impulse to just _run_, to turn and take this last chance and _go_. She can feel the muscles of her legs twitch, prepared.

But she lets her breath out in a shaky white exhale and follows him instead.

.

She doesn't go back to sleep, not that she tries. When she's upset, it's not a reprieve for her like it is for most—instead her troubles follow her there, become bloated and even more horrible now that they have no barriers except the bone of her skull.

She lays on her side under her blanket, stiff with tension, hating every moment that goes by, watching with dread as the thin, milky light of dawn creeps into the room. She listens closely over the sound of her own shaky breathing, the slightest hint of noise making it hitch—because it could be the servants, it could be _time_.

When the knock finally does come, she tastes bile, sour and watery in the back of her throat. Waiting was purgatory but she would've stayed there forever if it meant this moment never came.

The knocks have become politely insistent by the time she staggers to the door. She slips it open enough to make them realize they have permission to come in but doesn't bother to greet them. She doesn't even look at them—just drags herself across into the adjoining bathroom and assumes they'll follow.

She collapses in the chair at the vanity and doesn't bother to protest when one of the maidservants begins brushing her hair. The others start scurrying around behind them, preparing the bath and gathering all the same vile cosmetic things they put on her yesterday.

The only mercy she can find in any of it is that they all have the grace not to be cheery. She's sure they know some details of the situation and so, accordingly, they're somber enough to seem like they're preparing her for a funeral instead of a wedding. (And she wouldn't have it any other way.)

When the brush stops hitting tangles, she slips off her nightgown and steps down into the bath, sliding her back against hot marble. She fidgets until she's comfortable and lets her head fall back onto the edge of the tub, inhaling the steam. It's a nice change from the air outside, even if it reeks of the oils and salts the servants piled into the water.

The creak of the bathroom's hall door opening makes her head snap up again.

"The preparations are coming along well outside. I wanted to make sure they also were in here," says Frederick, turning to her with that same critical gaze he'd had yesterday. She wishes there were more bubbles in the water.

"Do something about the rings under her eyes," he says, grimacing, to one of the servants. Then to her: "Didn't you go back to sleep like I told you?"

"It's a miracle I slept at all."

"And most of that you spent walking around. Couldn't be very restful, especially for a day like today. I am looking forward to the party, even though I wouldn't suggest either of us do much eating."

"I'll drink, then."

He looks at her sharply. "Water, I hope you mean."

"Maybe some of that, too."

"You can't be _drunk_ by the time you have to leave."

"Why not?"

"It's important that you keep him happy! That you _please_ him tonight! Which you won't, if you're stumbling around like a drunken fool!"

She can't believe what they're discussing, that somehow the conversation spiraled out of control so quickly and now she's about to say this: "What difference will it make when I'm—" She hesitates, humiliated, and glances around at the servants who are all trying to act like they're not listening. "—laying down?"

"Is that all you intend to do?" he demands, with a little mocking laugh. "Lay there? Like a dead fish?"

"He was promised a virgin, wasn't he? I doubt he'll be expecting much more."

He opens his mouth, clearly not satisfied, but she cuts him off. "I don't want to talk about this with you!"

He starts circling the tub with slow, measured steps. She looks down at her legs, tries to make a point of not watching him.

"Yes," he finally says. "It is unfortunate, for both of us, that I'm the only one you have to discuss this with. In a perfect world, it would've been up to your parents to talk to you about your wedding night. I'm sure your mother would've done much better than I explaining what your husband might want, considering your father was far crueler to her than even that savage could _ever_ be to you. Or maybe your father would've claimed First Night and showed you himself—Grahams always have been so fond of incest—"

"Get out," Will snarls, head swiveling towards him.

He looks taken aback. "What?"

Her eyes roll up in her sockets to glare at straight at him, holding his gaze as steadily as she's able. "Get. _Out_," she repeats through gritted teeth, her hand coming up to clench the lip of the tub.

He looks like he doesn't even know what expression to make, much less how to respond. She's never talked to him like this before, but then again, he's never talked to her quite like _that_ until recently.

Their relationship has never been warm. He's always dealt with her using a kind of clinical detachment, like because he'd once been the Royal Physician, that automatically makes her his patient above anything else.

He'd been retained by the Grahams primarily because of his knowledge of madness, of _mental illness_—the numerous, horrible, creative ways the mind could malfunction, many of which presented themselves in her family sooner or later.

His scrutiny of her mind has always been uncomfortable, but he had never been truly _vicious_ to her, especially not when she was a little girl. But as the years passed, he seemed to get more and more _impatient_—of this exile, of her, of everything—and it was only recently that she's realized he's been waiting for an opportunity to present itself. Everything depends on an army, whether it be her ambitions, as half formed as they are, or his own, which she suspects have been burning for more than a decade.

It hurts more than it should, the rapidly crystallizing understanding that to him, she's just a pawn. Raised with ulterior motives, disposable and inhuman enough to let an entire army rape for the chance at a throne.

"I'm your _guardian_," he finally says, outraged. "You can't _order_—"

"If you won't go, I'll—I'll call someone to _make _you."

"Oh? And who do you think will take orders from a _child_?"

And isn't that something, to be called a child on her wedding day. It feels like laughing with blood in her mouth, a hemorrhage sprung in her chest.

"Someone will from a queen."

He shakes his head, glares at her in resentful, almost pitying condescension. "You're not queen of _anything_."

And she just barely smiles, a small, bitter twitch of her lips. "Yet."

His head jerks back, eyes widening. Her threat is veiled, abstract even to herself, but there it is, hanging in the humid air of the room. In a few hours she'll be a queen, and even if it's just in name, it'll be _something_. She won't be nothing anymore.

She'll be more than he is.

She wonders if he ever thought about that before.

He seems to shake the shock off all at once. Face turned hateful, he comes up on her quickly, hands slamming down on either side of the tub. She jerks away, looking back down into the water, neck tense where his breath hits it.

"I got you to here," he whispers furiously. "I _arranged_ this for you."

As if she will ever forget _that_.

"You—if not for me, you would be _dead_. You would've died along with your mother. And this is how you repay me? Ungratefulness, a refusal to cooperate every time I try to guide you, to do what's best for you. You're a stupid little girl who doesn't know the first thing about politics. You have no grasp of what it will take to get the Iron Throne, of what kind of game we're playing. You either win or you die, Will, and if not for me, how long do you really think you would last?"

She can hear him swallow, feel the brush of his hair against hers. He breathes in and out, one—two—three times, and then finally, he pulls away.

She doesn't look up at the noise of his footsteps drawing away, as relieving as they are. Nor does she when they stop.

"Maybe you belong with the savages—maybe it's all you're fit for," he says, and the door closes harsh and resounding behind him.

.

She stands and stares through the balcony doors as they put the dress on her, something gauzy and flowing and white—the virgin's color. Then they pull portions of her hair into braids and pin them up around her head, wipe the dampness off her face and put the powders and makeup on, taking extra care to apply a cream under her eyes. The perfume is after that, and the jewelry last, a scant few pieces she's sure were borrowed or donated by Lady Crawford.

The Lady herself arrives just as the last touches are being applied, knocking and waiting until one of the servants opens the door. She steps in, hands clasped behind her back, looking even more polished than usual. Will might be the bride—something Lady Crawford has acknowledged by her choice in dress color, black instead of her usual white or cream—but she feels small in comparison, homely and underwhelming.

"It's almost time," says Lady Crawford, with just a breath of apprehension. "The preparations are done and the . . . guests have arrived."

Will shuts her eyes and breathes deep against the rush of nausea. In front of her, the balcony and the water stretch out in invitation, beckoning, and every muscle twitches with the desire for the jump.

"But before we go," the other woman continues after a pause, voice drawing closer, "I thought I might give you my gift."

"I thought those came after . . ." _After the ceremony_. She can't even say it.

"Jack has something to be given for both of us then. This is just from me, and it's better given before."

Finally she opens her eyes and turns back to the woman, who smiles slightly as she pulls her hands around to the front. Will blinks blankly at what she's holding.

"In our homeland, these are only given by the winner of a tourney to his wife or a woman he wants to court." Her smile widens for an instant into something wistful and distant. "Jack gave one to me before we were married. And if your father were still King, I've no doubt you would've been receiving them from suitors at every tourney for several years running. So I feel you're overdue to become the Queen of Love and Beauty."

Lady Crawford lifts the wreath of white roses and positions them carefully on her head, twining a few hairs into the stems to anchor it in place.

Will makes an aborted motion to touch it, bemused. _Love and beauty_? What does she know about either of those things?

Nevertheless, she forces herself to be gracious.

"Thank you. You've been . . . very kind to me," she says, nearly stumbling over the words. "When I'm—when I'm Queen, I won't forget."

"But you won't be a queen," says Lady Crawford, and Will thinks she detects something . . . teasing in her voice now, a tone she's never heard from her before. "At least, not in the language of what's shortly to be your people."

Is that even what she's referring to? Now, or earlier with Frederick? Whenever she says the word queen, does she mean what she's about to become or something else, something more—_the _Queen, a Queen of Kings, of Seven Kingdoms, of _everyone _and _everything_?

Though how can she make promises on that now when Lady Crawford may not live long enough to see it happen, if it ever does?

"What will I be?" Will asks, and it strikes her that this is the first word she's going to hear in this language—is the only word Hannibal speaks that she's going to _know_.

It rolls off Lady Crawford's tongue smoothly, three flowing syllables: "_Khaleesi."_

Will drags it over and over though her head, bounces it off the barriers of her skull, and all she can think is that it sounds prettier than it has any right to be, when it's something she so dreads becoming.

Lady Crawford frowns at her, eyes softening. Her hands make a little half movement at her sides but still almost immediately, like she thought to touch her but realized quickly it wouldn't help.

"You look a lot like your mother on her wedding day," she says after a pause. The words sound more regretful than anything, certainly not a compliment.

"You were there?" she asks in surprise.

"Of course. My father was a strong ally of the Grahams." She laughs suddenly, but the tone makes it clear to Will that she's very, very unamused by what she's about to say. "He wanted _me_ to marry your father, but your grandfather wouldn't consider it. Grahams only married Grahams, to keep the blood pure. But none of your father's sisters or aunts were still living, so the closest they could get was a first cousin, your mother."

The reality that there are no other Grahams for her to marry—that she's the last, the only—presses down on her like something physical anytime she thinks about it too deeply. That the sum of her House exists only in her, and that the only way for it to continue, to survive, to multiply, is for her to birth it . . .

"I didn't know her personally," she continues. "But I was well enough acquainted with your father to pity her. I remember being very glad that I wasn't in her place, even seeing how lavish the wedding was. And she was beautiful that day, though . . . unsmiling. Resolved rather than happy. She always seemed that way, even after she was Queen."

"How could anyone be like that for so long?"

Lady Crawford inhales slowly, thinking, remembering. "I always got the impression that she put herself above everything—above _him_. High up on a branch so far away he could never reach it."

Will thinks—_knows_, instantly and with all certainty—that if she had known her mother, she would've envied her that more than anything. Admired it, and resented it.

Distance is the one thing Will can never have. Even if she approximates it from someone else, the very nature of it means that she's still too close.

"I think we've gotten sidetracked," says Lady Crawford, with a glance out the window over Will's shoulder. "The Khal appreciates punctuality."

She puts a little twist on the word _appreciates_, barely noticeable but apparent enough to Will that she hears it instead as _demands_ and feels the looming shadow of consequences should the demand not be met. (_Because he doesn't take insult lightly, don't waste his time—)_

Lady Crawford offers out her arm and she wants to shudder, to shake until she falls apart and can't be put back together. She wants to cry, too, to just let sobs come and come until she can't breathe or think and she's so red and wet and ugly that nobody could possibly want her.

But she bites all of that back—pushes it down past the lump in her throat to sit heavy in her chest, not gone but at least hidden.

And her arm barely trembles when she slides it around the other woman's, their elbows linking.

(She'll never understand distance, but she thinks that maybe she's beginning to understand resolve.)

.

Compared to the reception, the wedding ceremony itself is very brief.

Hannibal is already waiting for her, along with a scant few witnesses and the tribesman who appears to be acting as officiator. Frederick rushes to grab her arm and pull her away from Lady Crawford, his fingers even tighter than yesterday as he walks her towards the Khal.

He hands her off to him with a wide simpering smile.

After that, it becomes an exercise in not looking at him directly. She repeats fast spoken foreign words with the best pronunciation she can muster and keeps her eyes over his shoulder, on the ground, on her hands.

But it's not that easy. While looking and noticing movements and ticks and breathing might make it worse, she doesn't have to see a person to feel them. Sometimes they don't even have to be anywhere near her—she can just look at something they've made or done and suddenly it's like a pendulum in her mind, revealing more pieces of them with each swing.

Once, one of their hosts had been a wealthy old woman, religious and superstitious. She told her she'd been touched by the gods, given a third eye deep in her mind. It was a gift, she insisted—it showed favor.

Will doesn't feel favored. A few times, she's thought she might be willing to gouge her eyes out if it would just make it stop.

The impression she got from Hannibal makes her feel that way, incomplete as it is. It's carved out a place for itself in her head and all she wants to do is lock it away, to kill it in its infancy so she never has to feel it take full form, so she never has to understand.

She only meets his eyes briefly—accidentally—when the ceremony draws to a close and he leans down to kiss her. She doesn't see anything more than a kind of vague amusement before his lips are pressing into hers, dry and closed.

It's a peck, really, over in an instant. The audience claps reservedly—Frederick is still the only one smiling; Lady Crawford has her lips pursed, just barely not frowning. They have a more enthusiastic reaction when Hannibal says something—though she can't understand it, she's guessing it was along the lines of him asking if they were ready to start the after party.

Preparations have been made nearby, along the cliff side overlooking the sea. In contrast to the wedding, it seems like a good chunk of Hannibal's forty thousand men were invited to this, along with a nearly equal number of women. They crowd into a sunken area amongst a number of long, high tables, whereas Hannibal and Will sit on mats a few steps above them at their own low table. (Her guests, all three of them, also get a private table, though they're so far to her left she couldn't talk to them if she wanted to.)

Each table is laden heavily with food. _Beautiful_ food, crafted and arranged artfully, with vibrant colors and elaborate garnishes and sauces drizzled on and around it like paint. It's a veritable feast, the likes she's never seen before even at the wealthiest of hosts' homes.

And the _scent_ of it is just as heavenly as its appearance, no two aromas clashing.

It makes the saliva well up in her mouth just as much as it does the bile in her stomach.

Hannibal fixes his plate, and then hers, as the musicians start their first piece. His people take that as their cue to begin the party in earnest, dancing and laughing and, of course, eating.

She stares at the contents of her plate. The sauce is dripped and drizzled precisely around a few vegetables, which only seem to be there to accent the focal point—the meat. Three little flesh toned, seasoned medallions.

She reaches across and grabs her wineglass by the stem, sipping at it as she watches Hannibal eat from the corner of her eye. After awhile, she shifts her gaze to the other side, trying to catch a glimpse of what Lady Crawford is eating, if anything.

Eventually, she spears half of a small potato on her fork and nibbles at it, trying to calm her stomach. She enjoys alcohol—always has, ever since she got used to the taste—and no matter what Frederick might think, she can hold it fairly well. But it doesn't soothe an upset stomach.

Unfortunately, her action draws a sideways glance from Hannibal. He says—or asks—something that sounds . . . disappointed. Or disapproving.

"What's the meat?" she decides to ask, even though she fears the answer. She gestures down at it, tries to make a motion to get across _what_.

Hannibal glances at it and raises a hand up to his chest. He taps his pointer finger off to the side, over a pectoral muscle, and takes a pointed breath.

_Lung_.

Will swallows convulsively. Darts her tongue out over her lips. Turns back to the plate.

She drops the fork, half eaten potato on it, and picks the glass back up. It's drained in two gulps and she turns to a servant to ask for more.

She's halfway through the second glass when the gifts begin to be presented. The first to approach them is a woman with fine blonde hair, beautiful and pale and dispassionate. She trades a few words with Hannibal and leaves them with a bottle of rosé wine.

After her come many more, each as varied as the gifts—a thin, dark skinned man brings a beautiful wooden instrument she has no idea how to play, whereas the heavyset white man that hovers behind him gives them blocks of various cheeses. A man with receding hair brings deer pelts, an older brunette woman gives her a dress, and Jack Crawford presents to her a bracelet, gold and spiraling for her lower arm.

"It once belonged to a very brave, intelligent girl," he says. "I see a lot of her in you, so I believe there wouldn't be anyone better to have it."

She almost asks what happened to her, before realizing how obvious that is. _She died_.

So she just thanks him and puts it on, idly running her thumb over the metal as the next gift is presented, wondering who she was.

She's started to lose track of how many they've received when a woman approaches, her gait easy and confident.

"Something for the new Khaleesi," she says to Hannibal with a smile, gesturing down with her chin at the bundle of cloth in her arms. Will narrows her eyes when she thinks she sees it shift.

The woman ascends the few low, wide steps and lowers herself to her knees across from Will, turning the smile onto her. "My Lady. I am aware that the favored animal of your noble House—" she says, and this time, the bundle _definitely_ moves, "—and that of your banner, is the dog. So I thought you might like—"

She draws back an edge of the material and out pops a head, the black nose twitching with the smells in the air. Then a leg wiggles free and the rest of the material is unwrapped, falling to the ground, leaving her staring at a brown-gold puppy.

Will's breath hitches, mouth going dry, and the instant rush of happiness is so great it almost overpowers the anxiety and the dread that's dominated her for more than a week. She reaches out with no conscious input, grasping eagerly, fingers sinking into short, soft fur.

The woman releases the puppy to her and she pulls it onto her lap, its front paws on her chest. It (but then she glances down, and suddenly it's a he) sniffs her face, nose sweeping in damp arcs over her chin and cheeks and lips. Then he starts to kiss her, licking a path up until his paws are on her shoulders—and that's when he latches onto her earlobe, sucking eagerly.

She jumps, actually _laughing_, and it's the first time in recent memory that it hasn't sounded like the death keen of some animal.

"He misses his mother," says the woman, tilting her head fondly. "But he's weaned, no matter how much he'd like more milk."

"What is his name?" she asks, content to let him stay there for as long as he'd like. However, he seems to realize he won't be getting anything and slides back down to investigate her lap.

"That's for my Lady to decide."

Will blinks, surprised that nothing immediately jumps to mind.

Maybe her family does have some special affinity for dogs, as she herself has always adored them above any other animal. Frederick sometimes told her of her grandfather's hounds, her father's retrievers, even her mother's pack of tiny lapdogs, but he would never let her have one of her own. They had no money to feed a dog, he said, living off of charity as they were—and were they supposed to just bring an animal into their hosts' homes, expect them to shelter it, too?

So Will took what she could, befriending her hosts' dogs and strays on the street, however briefly it lasted. She much preferred their company to any human's—they were joyful and nonjudgmental, intelligent without doing any harm with it. They comforted her, each of them a soothing presence that eliminated loneliness without actually having to _interact_.

Yet, maybe she really had been convinced she'd never have one of her own, considering she's never even touched on names until this moment.

"What's _your _name?" she asks, if only to break the anticipatory silence.

"Alana. Of the House of Bloom."

"You know about my House. And you call your family a House as well. Does that mean you're . . . from my homeland?"

She nods. "My family stewarded a small island along the eastern coast."

The puppy's head finds its way onto the table, and his tongue flicks out towards the meat on her plate. She pulls him back just in time.

"Then how did you end up here?" _Did your family support mine_? she almost continues bitterly.

But Alana doesn't seem overly upset by what she says, her expression barely changing: "My father died when I was about your age. As he didn't have any sons or living male relatives, who was to inherit his title was immediately up for debate. I knew that it was likely I would've been . . . pressured into marrying the successor to strengthen his position, so I fled. Eventually I found my way across the sea, and for the past several years, I've been learning healing and medicine from the Khal." She lowers her head a fraction in deference to Hannibal.

Will frowns. "Why didn't _you_ inherit his title?"

Alana frowns in return, confused, glancing questioningly from her to Hannibal and back again. "Women don't. They never have. The only titles they can have come from marriage, or relation to their father."

Will grips the puppy a little tighter, lips a severe line. This isn't—it's not anything Frederick has ever told her. She's always thought—he's always _implied_—that since she is her father's only child, there's no question about her inheriting his title. She is the Queen because he'd been the King, and if she could just take back the throne, she would have as much power as he'd had, an equal, autonomous monarch.

But if a daughter doesn't inherit her father's titles, even if she is his only child, what does that ultimately mean for her?

She darts her eyes over to Frederick, glaring as she watches him drink and talk with Lord Crawford. She also wonders what this means for _him_, what he's playing at—what _else_ he's withholding from her.

A burst of loud, angry screaming, and the gradual lessening of noise from the crowd, draws her back to what's in front of her. Alana's half-turned, staring with concern at the scene—a young redheaded man spitting words at a wide eyed, wind chaffed girl, who takes them in silence.

Next to her is another girl, slightly taller and fuller but with such similar features she might be a sister. She _does_ respond, yelling and stooping swiftly down to pick up a rock that she throws against his forehead.

He spares her a short, poisonous glance, hand moving automatically to the wound, but his next shouts are still aimed at the first girl.

"What's going on?" Will demands, looking sharply to Alana.

She twists her legs underneath her, positioning herself sideways between the table and the crowd. "He's accusing her of murdering his sister."

"Right _now_? In the middle of—_this_?"

"Parties nearly always double as times to resolve disputes. The Khal is present to preside and . . ." She hesitates, glancing at her from the corner of her eye. ". . . if no one dies, they might run out of food."

All at once, the taller girl is grabbed by a middle-aged woman, who hisses in her ear as she pulls her away, and the man produces a knife, knuckles white around the hilt. The remaining girl eyes it warily, only just looking up in time to catch a blade thrown her way by a man with receding hair, the same one who gave them deer pelts.

"This is a fight to the death?" She's dumbstruck, horrified—because she's only just reached marriageable age and yet that girl out there is even _younger_ than she is, a _child, _and though Will's just realized she's ignorant about any number of things, she _does_ know that women don't fight. It's inconceivable to her that this man would even pick a fight with one, and beyond that, that _no one is stepping in to stop it_.

"Vengeance has a lot of cultural significance," says Alana, like that explains anything. "Fights like these are standard for any number of grievances."

"But she's so _young_—and why isn't her father or, or a brother trying to take her place?"

"That's not the way it works. Revenge by proxy would never be considered acceptable. Here, everyone is culpable for their own actions, no matter their age or gender."

She sounds like she accepts it—but maybe it's more that she's gotten _used _to it, because Will sees her frown when she turns back to the combatants, the line of her jaw tense.

The other partygoers have formed a circle around them, jeering and screaming, goading them on. Man and girl sidestep, sizing each other up, both poised to strike, though where he's steady, focused in his rage, she's pale and afraid and taking short jerking breaths.

He lunges first and she just barely dodges under, spinning to stay facing him but backing away as far as the crowd will allow.

She says something, head shaking—_I didn't do it_, Will imagines—but the last word is cutoff when she skitters away from the next slash.

It continues like that for a while, painful to watch. She's like a scared little rabbit, relying fully on speed to survive the fox, but even that fails her when she finally moves in to attempt a blow. The tip of her knife grazes him but he brings his own blade up in time to catch her in the arm, a hard, cutting hit that makes her shriek.

She manages to stagger back as the blade is aimed at her throat, though Will thinks she must've felt the air move against her jugular. She hesitates, heaving, blood welling up and dripping down between her fingers clenched over the wound, eyes jumping between him and the knife by his feet where she dropped it.

He glances at it, too, and then steps over it, his mouth a grim line as he closes the scant distance between them. She stands there, frozen, and her eyes are so big and the knife is coming up and Will doesn't even think she can keep looking—

But then—then she's moving. She's dodging. The knife catches her on the side of her good arm but instead of flinching she kicks him low and hard on the shin and hits her shoulder into his as she passes him, knocking him off balance.

She bends and picks up her knife in one fluid motion, feet already preparing for the turn, and then she's back over to him just as he's spun around, his weight focused all on one side.

And she slams the knife into his stomach, blade sinking into the hilt.

For just an instant, they both seem shocked. They don't even bother to look at it, holding each other's eyes as the blood starts to seep down in rivulets between them.

His weapon hits the ground with a dull thump and he looks like he's going to fall, like the blade sucked out all the rigidity from his limbs. But then something changes on her face—the rabbit grows fangs, baring its teeth and narrowing its eyes, and with a grunt of effort, she rips the knife up through skin and tissue all the way to his breastbone.

The blood comes pouring out in its wake, thickened with meat and guts and off-white viscera that plop hideously to the ground.

And finally—_finally_ she pulls the knife out and he falls, dead before he lands.

The crowd is a writhing mess, a pack of howling wolves that she ignores in favor of Hannibal. She turns to him and raises her knife, deliberately, carefully, and with one long, pale finger she scoops up blood and tissue from the blade, bringing it to her mouth.

Will feels sick dampness gather on her brow as she watches the girl's neck work, sees the trail of red left on her lower lip as she pulls her saliva-slick finger back out. The wine is beginning to take effect in earnest, but instead of dimming her like it usually does, it _sharpens_ her, dulling everything in the peripheral so as to make what's right in front of her clearer.

And it is clear, taking form and weight in her mind, and she _knows_—horror-terror-hate-adrenaline, _stay way from me stay away from me_, rushing white noise in the ears and euphoria in the chest as the knife goes up-up-up through resistance, blood over the tongue and against the membranes of the throat, gristle and fat sliding heavy into the stomach—

She digs her nails into her arm to make it end, to bring her back to herself. _Yes, this is her body, here she is, here not there, this is her._

Next to her, Hannibal finally gives the girl a little half nod, deliberate and considering. It seems to relax her, and the other girl reappears to grab her excitedly as the chaos increases, the crowd tearing at the corpse, dragging it off.

_To the fire pit_, thinks Will. _Dessert for my wedding guests._

She chases the sour alcohol bile in top of her throat back down with another gulp of wine, shuddering as burns past her tonsils.

.

More gifts are presented, none as good as the one on her lap.

The smell of smoke and cooking meat filter in from somewhere in the distance.

Will drinks until her stomach refuses to take it. Then she just sits there, keeping the puppy locked loosely in her arms.

The crowd has calmed somewhat—not as sedate as they were in the very beginning, but no longer the screeching, bloodthirsty mass they'd become. The two girls stand by one of the tables, giggling with each other like harmless children under the watch of the man who threw the knife. Alana had drifted over to them at some point, speaking with him in between small bites of an apple.

But all conversation stops when Hannibal stands, each voice blinking out nearly simultaneously. Eyes seek him out en masse and he says something that seems to be half directed at them, half at her.

The Crawfords stand up then, too, Frederick following them, and Alana throws a glance in her direction before setting her apple down and making her way back over.

"The Khal is ready to give you his gift," she says, stopping at the foot of the steps.

But all Will hears is, _he's ready to leave_. And as much as she knew this moment was coming—as much as it's hung heavy over her head, weighing her down with its inevitability—her heart still lurches and drops, her joints locking. Her throat closes up and her chest constricts and the world does a little flip, and by the time it rights itself, everyone is staring at her expectantly, the atmosphere quickly becoming awkward.

Frederick clears his throat pointedly and she finally takes a hitching breath, one leg uncurling out from under her. She pushes herself up with one arm, the puppy tucked under the other, and stands there unmoving until Hannibal specifically motions for her to follow with a twitch of his fingers.

The crowd parts around them without prompting. She steps over browning bloodstains as he leads her past the tables, out to the fringes of the gathering.

His horse is waiting there, tall and elegant, black mane and coat groomed so fastidiously they practically _shine_, even in the dying light. It's flicking its tail, head angled down to press its nose close to that of the horse next to it.

It—she's—shorter, smaller, but beautiful, with a pure white coat and matching mane. Her eyes stand out starkly, big and black surrounded by long, dainty white lashes, and the tip of her snout is a soft gray, nearly matching the color of her polished hooves.

"A mare is the traditional wedding gift of a Khal to his Khaleesi," says Alana. She's taken up a spot a little off to the side, next to Frederick and the Crawfords. "She's of the best stock, broken just for you."

Now Lady Crawford's words are back again, _be polite_, but Will doesn't want to. She might like the horse but she doesn't want to thank this man for _anything_—not for a wedding gift, not even for an _army—_

But something—maybe self-preservation or a fear of the unknown, of what might happen—forces a smile onto her face.

"She's beautiful," she murmurs, eyes darting along his cheekbones and up to his forehead. She reaches out her free hand and runs it down the mare's neck, getting a bob of the head and a flick of the ears from her in return.

And then—then Hannibal makes another motion, one horribly clear.

_Get on_.

Will swallows convulsively, hand falling away. The puppy squirms and she tightens her arm around him, maybe a little too much, but the feel of his side against her, going steadily in and out with breath, seems to her like her last reprieve, her last second of near-peace.

And then it ends. She hands him to Alana and all that's left is the cold and the sweat dripping down the back of her neck.

"His name is Winston," Will tells her, abruptly certain. She doesn't know why she picked it—she can't remember where she first heard it or what the name means—but maybe that's why she likes it. No associations.

"That's a nice name," says Alana genially, with a carefully reassuring smile.

_Reassuring_, perhaps, because she sympathizes, because she's _almost_ been here. Will, as she is, can't fathom whatever it was in her that let her make that choice, to run and let it all go, and isn't even sure she wants to. It might not be something she can afford, not now.

As it is, her resolve is like a physical thing, tugged back and forth inside of her. The fear makes it falter but then it claws its way back, and she manages to put her hands up on the saddle and her foot in the stirrup.

Frederick rushes to help her and it's all she can do not to kick him in the face as she arranges herself awkwardly, both legs on one side. She's never been a proficient horseback rider—unlike, it seems, Hannibal, who swings himself up into the saddle in one seamless motion.

Frederick mouths something at her. She doesn't bother looking closely, as she can already guess what he has to say.

Her hands clench around the reins, leather digging into her palms as the mare bites against the bit, and the foot hanging free of the stirrup twitches, just inches from his temple.

(_One sharp kick_, whisper-hiss the malformed pieces of Hannibal's psyche from where they scratch against the barriers of her skull.)

She takes a deep, steadying breath, dragging one arm up over her forehead to dry it.

Beside her, Hannibal's horse is impatient, snorting and swishing its tail as its master sits motionless and observes her. His gaze is veiled, inscrutable, and this time she feels more herself than him, stifled and displayed like a bug under a looking glass. There's something almost reminiscent of Frederick in his expression—something _clinical, _a keen interest she doesn't read as sexual.

Frederick has always been like a _pin_, scraping light and thin over her surface, ineffectual even though it draws blood. But Hannibal seems like—like a _dagger_, something sharp and precise and waiting to cut deep. She feels as though he's vivisecting her, picking apart every aspect of her appearance to hold squirming in his hands, and learning more from it than he should.

It seems like it goes on and on, even though he probably doesn't look for more than a few seconds before he spurs his horse forward. It breaks into an easy trot, which she stiffly, gently, prods the mare into imitating.

They ride for a good twenty minutes, their path winding and uneven. Dusk darkens until the only thing to see by is moonlight, and when Will glances over her shoulder, she can just glimpse the flickering dots of the party's fires. She can still hear them raging, low, muffled voices carrying on the wind, but she can't smell the cooking meat anymore and for only a second, she imagines _separation_. Those lights are a ship and she's floating in the sea, surrounded on all sides by dark nothing, and she's apart from _everything_.

It all pops like a bubble, of course, when the horses stop. Hannibal's arm is out, hand high on the mare's reins to keep her still.

Will slides down, legs unsteady under her from the second she lands. It's like she's taking them instead of them taking her as she goes, off as far as she can. It's not much, just a few feet to the edge of the ground and then the drop, tall and dizzying down into the water.  
The sea is smooth like black glass except where the waves lap foamy against the rocks, and she watches the moonlight twist and dance along the surface, dying and recreating itself with the movement of the water.

It would just take one instant in the air and then there would be an eternity under the waves, muted and cushioned and peaceful. She would have everything life never gave her and everything else would remain, as unchanged as if she never existed because for all of her years she has been nothing. Her line is dead and the usurper sits on its throne convinced of that, blissful in his ignorance, and if she takes one step, she can make it a truth by her own insignificance.

Hannibal's gaze is heavy on her back and tears burn behind her eyes, maybe ones of fear or maybe—maybe _anger_, at herself, because this is her last opportunity, sitting there right in front of her with every reason to take, but she just can't make herself _do it_.

So instead Will reaches up to her head and tugs on the crown of flowers. It comes away with a sting, hairs caught twisted in the stems, and she lets her thumb trace the edge of a rose petal before she drops it into the water. She watches with the closest thing to satisfaction she's felt in a long time as it's picked up by the current, the slight weight gentled out into deeper waters.

She's not the Queen of Love and Beauty, but she _is _a Queen. Unknown, but one day her rose crown will wash up on that distant shore and the _land_ will understand, even if no man does—she's _alive_. She exists, and soon, soon . . . she will be there.

She steels herself, then, and wipes away the wetness from her face.

She walks back to Hannibal and clenches her eyes shut and imagines—imagines with everything she is that she's somewhere else, high up on a throne, and that the touch of his skin and the scrape of his nails are the cold slide of fused iron swords, an exquisite pain she swears that Frederick Chilton will never know.

.

.

Author's Note: The chapter title comes from 'Royals' by Lorde, because of course it does. :) And could you tell I couldn't resist putting in a flower crown?

Thanks for the reviews and favorites!

Anna


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